Mercury has contaminated rivers worldwide, with health consequences for aquatic organisms and humans who consume them. Researchers have focused on aquatic birds as sentinels for mercury. However, trophic transfer between adjacent ecosystems could lead to the export of aquatic mercury to terrestrial habitats. Along a mercury-contaminated river in Virginia, United States, terrestrial birds had si...

Mercury is one of the most toxic and hazardous pollutant which occurs in the environment in different chemical forms, of which methylmercury is the most dangerous. Recently it was recognised that long-term anthropogenic inputs of mercury into environment resulted in the global mercury pollution and it was concluded that action should be taken to quantify the pollution sources and reduce human-g...

Dental amalgam fillings containing approximately 50% mercury have been used for almost 200 years and have been controversial for almost the same time. Allegations of effects caused by amalgams have involved many diseases. Amalgam is one of the most popular dental restoratives, but concerns exist over its safety because of the mercury in its formulation. Small amounts of mercury are released fro...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Long-term contact with mercury may induce membranous nephropathy (MN); however, the clinical pathologic features and pathogenesis of mercury-induced MN have not been investigated. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS The present study retrospectively evaluated 11 cases of mercury-induced MN to analyze its causes and its clinical and pathologic features. RE...

Mesocosm experiments in an optically transparent lake allow the manipulation of both dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and incident ultraviolet radiation (UVR) in order to study mercury reduction and emission processes. In the absence of UVR and the presence of visible light, mercury emission is very low (approximately0.3 ng/m2/h). When UVR is permitted in the mesocosm chambers, mercury emission i...

Evaluation of mercury exposure in an individual patient ideally includes the presenting history, physical examination, consideration of the differential diagnosis, and mercury analysis of blood and urine specimens. Analysis of mercury in hair specimens may supply useful supplemental information about exposure to organic compounds such as methylmercury, particularly to help reconstruct the patte...

Two chelating agents meso-2,3-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) and sodium 2,3-dimercapto-propane-1-sulphonate (DMPS) were tested for their efficiency in mercury removal from the body of rats in the presence and in the absence of selenium. Female Wistar rats were given a single intraperitoneal injection of mercuric chloride or an equimolar mixture of mercuric chloride and sodium selenite (1.5 micr...

BACKGROUND Colonial cinnabar mining and refining began in Huancavelica, Peru, in 1564. With a local source of mercury, the amalgamation process was adopted to refine silver in Potosí, Bolivia, in the early 1570s. As a result, large quantities of mercury were released into the environment. OBJECTIVES We used archival, primary, and secondary sources to develop the first estimate of mercury emis...

Total and methyl mercury concentrations of cicada bodies, wings, and exuviae were investigated to study the mercury distribution characteristics. Results indicated that total and methyl mercury concentrations of cicada bodies were 2.64 mg/kg and 123.93 ng/g on average, respectively. In cicada tissues, total mercury concentrations were found to increase in the order of exuviae (0.50 mg/kg on ave...

Coal-burning power plants have been the largest unregulated source of mercury emissions in the United States, sending 48 tons of mercury into the air annually. In 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promulgated its Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR), requiring coal-fired power plants to reduce their mercury emissions by approximately 20% beginning in 2010. Numerous states are already requ...